Coon Rapids Enterprise

07/26/2023

Niet altijd op de fiets, maar soms ook in de lokale pers 😀. Hierbij het mooie artikel na ons interview door Charlie Nixon van C**n Rapids Enterprise. C**n Rapids (dag 24) was inderdaad een leuk dorpje met vriendelijke mensen (en goeie steak 😉)!

11/02/2021

Chuck’s Bargain Barn, a legendary destination on the short list of places to go when visiting this area, has closed.
It’s owner, Charles Griffith, 96, has succumbed to old age. He is currently residing at Friendship Home in Audubon.
Bill Griffith, who lives in Arkansas, said his father's business is not likely to reopen.

Here is a feature story the Enterprise authored and published back in April 2020.

If you wanted to buy a good used hammer, it’s hard to imagine a better selection than what’s available at Chuck’s Bargain Barn. This unique retailing hub in northeast Audubon County offers second-chance homes for not only hammers but for thousands of other tools, household and farm items.
“If we don’t have it, you probably don’t need it,” says owner Charles Griffith, who has been collecting, selling and replenishing his inventory for the last 29 years. “We have power tools, hand tools, furniture, lots of glassware and everything, really. You know, when we clean out a house, we take everything.”
Chuck’s Bargain Barn has become a legendary destination and is often on the short list of places to go when entertaining out-of-town guests. Many people go just to look around, and they end up buying things they never knew they needed! Charles says he’s had customers from every state and also 29 foreign countries.
“What tickles me, sometimes I’ll be standing around some young people and they’ll say, ‘My goodness, look at all those antiques!’ I look around and wonder what the heck they’re talking about because I grew up with all those things,” Charles laughed.
Griffith, who will turn 95 in September, has transformed his rural acreage from what used to be a farming and livestock operation into a processing operation where items are sorted and inventoried. Anything determined unsaleable is salvaged for aluminum, brass, copper, pewter, stainless steel and electric wiring. Everything else is sent to the appropriate building for display.
“I have buckets here when I’m sorting and I throw items into different buckets, depending on where it goes,” Charles explained.
“What really hurts the worst right now is that the metal markets all went to hell. Iron went down to about $50 a ton,” he added.
****
Charles grew up on a farm about a mile northeast from where he now lives and works. As a child, he used to walk by the house en route to the Melville #6 Audubon County Country Store, a trek of 1.6 miles.
“In the winter of ‘34-35 and again in ‘35-36, I had of perfect attendance -- never missed a day and was never late,” Charles bragged.
It’s clear Charles has never steered away from hard work. He married Jean Hodges in 1951 and they moved to their farm where hard work paid the bills. Jean helped Charles grow row crops and raise livestock, and Jean raised chickens, marketing the eggs and dressing over 500 chickens a year. For a period of time Charles and Jean operated a registered dog breeding business, with up to 75 puppies on the farm most of the time. In 1983, the couple took ownership of B.J.’s Lounge in C**n Rapids and added bar-tending to their resume — until they sold that business to Joe Dorpinghaus in 1991, about the time that Charles turned 65.
****
At an age when most men contemplate retirement, Griffith said he got into the second-hand merchandise business by accident. He said it started when his wife, Jean, talked him into remodeling a barn that was originally built in the 1890s.
“My wife had a thing for old barns,” Chuck said, “So I had to put a new roof on it.”
Then the city of Audubon announced that it was sponsoring a community-wide garage sale event. Charles decided to participate. However, Audubon’s event lasted one day while Charles’s event just kept going on and on.
“The day I started in business (April 1, 1991) was the day Audubon had its first garage sale,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Well I have some junk around here that I could put on that garage sale’, so I cleared out an area of that old barn, spent $10 to get my ad in the newspaper and then sat back to see what would happen. It just kind of took off.”
A few months later, Charles was still selling stuff out of the barn when a guy came in and asked if he had a state sales tax permit.
“Why would I have one of those?” Charles asked.
“He said, ‘this business might take off and you’ll be going good for a couple of years and then the state will come in to see you some day. That could get kind of expensive so you better just get one,’ he told me, so I got one. Officially, the state says I didn’t open until the first of September but I was actually open all summer. We’d have a few people stop... and then they’d tell someone else.”
In the beginning, Charles started attending household and farm auctions so he could gather more merchandise for his new business. But as time went on, he started buying complete household and furniture dispersal directly from families.
“Most of the houses, we paid to clean out but other houses, they paid us to take everything away.”
One of the funny things, Charles said, is the thought of finding some money hidden away somewhere.
“But the only greenback we ever found was a dollar bill wadded up in a salt shaker. We did find two silver dollars in the top dresser drawer that came from Audubon. One was worth a dollar and the other was worth $31.”
Remarkably, Charles says he’s cleaned out 561 houses and buildings since 1997.
“I keep a pretty close tab on my bookkeeping system. You can pick any one day out of all these years and I can tell you who worked that day, what we took in cash and checks, and I can also tell you how many ones, fives, tens, twenties, fifties and hundred dollar bills. That’s the way I keep track of the barn.”
When Charles meets with someone to discuss buying a house full of wares, he says he gives them an offer and then won’t take an answer right away, giving them time to sleep on it.
“That way they can’t say, ‘that old man sure ripped us off’”.
If the offer is accepted, he promises to have it cleaned out within two weeks.
“There won’t be a piece of paper left on the floor. We take everything. If it’s loose, we take it; if it’s fastened, we leave it.”
However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Chuck’s is not currently cleaning out household estates.
If you’re planning to visit Chuck’s Bargain Barn for your first time, you’d be wise to allow yourself several hours. After all, there’s plenty to see, much of it displayed on 12,000 feet of shelving, according to Richard Bancroft, who works there along with his wife, Kathy.
Running Chuck’s Bargain Barn is a labor-intensive pursuit requiring saavy business and book-keeping skills and and a lot of patience. It’s also a good thing for the environment to recycle and repurpose and otherwise keep more stuff out of the landfill.
Charles describes his business more succinctly.
“We’re taking junk and turning it back into merchandise.”
He doesn’t fancy himself with a keen insight for what’s hot and trendy.
“We get some of the dangest stuff in. Sometimes we’ll get something we fear we’ll never move out and then it will be gone the next day. Then there are other things we think we can sell easily and we still have them. But overall, it’s been kind of a fun business.”
One trend Charles pointed out is the decline in antique furniture.
“We’re into another generation and these young people are tired of mother’s and grandmother’s antiques. They want new.”
But at 95, Charles has seen plenty of trendy fads and he knows that antique furniture will be a big seller again. And he’s optimistic he’ll be around to see it happen.
“My father lived to be 100 years, nine months and four days old,” Charles said. “My goal is to make it five days. Barring an accident, I think I’ll make it because I keep active every day.”

09/29/2019

FROHLICHS NOTE 100th ANNIVERSARY
from September 26, 2019 edition of the C**n Rapids Enterprise

C**n Rapids-Bayard first grader Garret Sporrer knows more about the grocery business than any of his classmates.
That’s because his mom is Janel Frohlich Sporrer and his uncle is Jeff Frohlich, who are the co-owners of the Frohlich’s Super Valu in downtown C**n Rapids. He’s already spent quite a lot of his young life hanging out at the store with his mom.
“He knows how to run the cash register,” Janel says, smiling. “He can count the bills and I usually do the change. But he knows that four quarters is a dollar and three quarters is 75 cents.”
Janel also tells the recent story when she was training a new high school employee. It was time to close the store and she instructed the new employee to follow her so he’d know where all the light switches in the store were located. Garret, who was within earshot, jumped up and offered to do it for her.
“He knows where every light switch is located but he just can’t reach them. He knows because he follows me in the morning when I open up.”
Will Garret grow up to learn the grocery business and become the fifth generation Frohlich to own the C**n Rapids grocery store? His mom doesn’t think so. Cognizant of the challenges for rural grocery stores, Janel thinks Garret might be smarter to follow in the footsteps of his father, Pat, who is a farmer and cattle producer in the Dedham area.
However, her sentiments about Garret’s future does nothing to take away the significance of this week’s celebration at the Frohlich’s Super Valu store.
“We do know it’s something special, because you don’t see many independent family-owned grocery businesses,” Janel said. “Most of them are corporate and the family businesses haven’t survived,” Janel acknowledged.
“Nowadays there’s so much more competition,” added Jeff Frohlich.
This Friday, Frohlich’s Super Valu is giving away free hot dogs and hamburgers and hosting a variety of door prizes to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the family grocery store.
The Frohlich grocery store has been a jewel for downtown C**n Rapids for many decades. It has its beginning back when Janel and Jeff’s great-grandfather, E.C. “Ed” Frohlich, was in charge of the grocery department of the Garst Store. Goodwin and Warren Garst had decided to focus more on dry goods and women’s wearing apparel so they sold their grocery business to Frohlich. He continued to run the grocery business in the back quarters of the Garst Store until his death in 1936, when his son, Lewis, took it over.
Lewis grew up in C**n Rapids and was a member of the C**n Rapids High School Class of 1926. Of course, he helped his father in the store. “I grew up in the grocery and meat business, that’s all I know,” Lewis had once told the C**n Rapids Enterprise.
After Ed Frohlich died, Lewis found the quarters occupied by his father’s old store too small so he went across the street and in 1938 built the building directly north of the current Availa Bank.
Both Lewis and his wife, Nola, were saavy, energetic and charismatic business owners who stayed on the leading edge of the grocery business in a time when there were seven or eight grocery stores in the C**n Rapids community. Frohlich’s grocery store had been affiliated with the IGA grocery franchise but around the time the new store was built, it became a privately-owned franchise of Super Valu. Nola Frohlich said she and her husband really dug into the business from their new location.
“There was a lot of room for us. That was the first time we had carts and self-service. We worked our heads off in that little store. The war was on. We worked and saved,” Nola Frohlich said in a 1952 interview printed in the C**n Rapids Enterprise.
The Frohlichs’s hard work paid off and they prospered. The town was growing. Soon they discovered they had outgrown their store and proceeded to build again — this time in a more optimum spot on the corner of Fourth and Main Street where there was plenty of parking available. They opened the new store in May 1947 with a bang as many people flocked in to see the new layout.
“The store, as modern as any in the state and stocked and staffed in city style, is housed in a brand new brick and tile building. One of the most unique features are the grocery carts for customers with a little seat rigged in front for the convenience of the baby, as well as the mother while she is shopping,” the C**n Rapids Enterprise reported following the grand opening.
“At that time, it was something,” Nola Frohlich said. “We had people from Carroll shop because they didn’t have anything like it.”
The store even had doors that automatically opened, a novelty at the time for the area.
Lewis Frohlich told the C**n Rapids Enterprise that his new building was proving to be a popular shopping center with regular customers coming from many miles away. Many of the customers did their shopping on Saturday nights when C**n Rapids Main Street came alive with activity and the store often stayed open until midnight before all customers were checked out. There was a meat counter staffed by a full time butcher but most of the food products sold were primarily canned goods, with much less fresh produce, frozen or convenience foods that consumers expect today.
By the early 1960s, Lewis was beginning to experience some health concerns. His youngest son, Phillip, had recently come back from military service and was working at the store. Jerome and his wife, Janyce, were living in Davenport where Jerome was a salesman for Swift Meat Company. But with the young couple expecting their first child (Jeff, born Nov. 1964), they came back to C**n Rapids in August 1964 and Jerome too, started working at the grocery store. For the next two decades, Jerome and Phil took the reins, so to speak, while Lewis edged toward retirement. His transition was never fully complete as he loved to spend his days at the store. He died in 1985.
Phillip, known to everyone as ‘Butchie’, was in charge of the produce department, while Jerome handled the store’s business aspects. Like his parents, Jerome worked day and night to keep the store going forward in an increasingly competitive and changing consumer environment.
By now, Jerome and his wife, Janyce had five young children who were beginning to spend time at the store. Their oldest, Jeff, remembers sacking groceries when he was just 12 or 13, usually when a high school employee went AWOL and Jerome needed somebody to fill in quickly.
“And even earlier, I remember coming down on Sunday -- back when we were closed on Sunday -- and building displays for the next week,” recalled Jeff. “That was probably our first job. I don’t remember if we even got paid. But I remember stacking cans of corn and canned peas.” The large stacks were usually located at the end of an aisle where customers had a clear view as they pushed their shopping carts up and down the aisles.
Despite being a mother of five young children, Janyce also had store responsibilities even though a lot of her tasks were done at home during nap time and later, when the kids were in school.
“I worked when I could,” Janyce said. “I made shelf signs when the ads came out. Back then the signs weren’t printed by a computer, they were ‘Signs By Janyce’. I also mailed coupons back to the manufacturers and then we’d wait for the checks to come.” Janyce also remembers teaching her kids how to stock shelves after school. “If the truck was late and we were still stocking shelves at dinnertime, then we’d be treated to supper downtown,” she laughed.
Janel, Jerome and Janyce’s fourth child, said she and her younger sister, Judy, didn’t have to work quite as much as Jeff, Jolene and John because they were out for high school sports. “But we worked weekends and there were no excuses,” Janel said. “If we had to catch the team bus, we had to work until it was time to get to the bus.”
Janel and Judy were star forwards on the C**n Rapids girls basketball team that went to state in 1989. Janel said her dad didn’t mind letting his girls off for basketball games but he didn’t tolerate softball quite as well because it meant the girls were gone too much on the weekends for tournaments.
By the early 1980s, consumer buying habits were changing more rapidly. People began driving to the city for recreational shopping, including groceries. Wal-mart was becoming a serious retail competitor. And while low prices were important, Jerome Frohlich realized selection and variety were the key aspects in the grocery business. As a result, Jerome expanded the store to the west in 1989, adding a 3,300 square feet addition that allowed for a much greater variety of products plus the addition of a courtesy counter, deli and bakery. Now the store boasted nearly 10,000 square feet. The expansion was completed on the eve of the store’s 70th anniversary so Jerome, forever a marketeer, held a grand re-opening event.
By now, Frohlich’s Super Valu was open seven days a week. Due to the popularity of convenience stores, Jerome expanded his store hours, staying open until 9 pm. six days a week. Jerome also embraced technology, ushering in computerized cash registers and inventory systems. Following graduation from Iowa State University in 1988, Jeff Frohlich began working full time at the store. In the mid-1990s, Janel Frohlich returned to the fold after she earned her degree from Northwest Missouri State University.
Around this time, ‘Butchie’ decided to seek greener pastures so he left Jerome, Jeff and Janel to operate the store. Then everything changed even more dramatically in 2002, when Jerome died unexpectedly and Jeff and Janel suddenly found themselves in charge. Fortunately Janyce came back to lend her help and has been a big help financially in keeping the store open. For Jeff and Janel, it hasn’t been easy and the hours have been excruciatingly long. They have had to guide the store through more challenging times with Wal-Mart, big box stores, Amazon and now, Dollar General, all fighting for market share.
The impact of Dollar General on small family-owned grocery stores has already been well documented including how it impacts rural family owned grocery stores. Jeff and Janel know they have to be as saavy as their grandparents and father to stave off the competition. They’ve made some changes, like adding a liquor section, increasing productivity in the deli and stocking items requested by regular customers.
This week, however, is a time for celebration. Jeff and Janel and Janyce are very proud to have carried to the torch to this point. They intend to celebrate with family, friends and customers and they hope they come from far and wide. Janel noted that all five of the Frohlich kids will be at the store this Friday, as will her husband Pat, if he hasn’t already started the fall harvest. And so will Janyce. Many vendors have offered up door prizes. The Homecoming parade will stir up Crusader spirit and alumni will help sing the school song. It should be a festive occasion.
Garret Sporrer will also be there, welcoming customers and maybe running the cash register.
And when it’s all over, he’ll want to turn out the lights.

07/19/2019

Don't forget -- this is today!

07/13/2019

07/13/2019

GRAVEL ROAD BIKE RACE AND ULTRA MARATHON HELP TO SHOW OFF WHITEROCK CONSERVANCY...

Nearly 60 riders participated in the first Iowa Gravel Classic which started and ended at Whiterock Conservancy’s Star Field in Guthrie County last Saturday.
The weather was nearly perfect, with cloud cover early in the morning that gradually gave way to sunshine around 11 a.m.
All of the racers were from Iowa except two and they were from Kansas and Colorado.
Twenty-nine competed in the 100 mile competition on dirt roads. Paul Hamberg of Waterloo was the winner of the 100 mile race, wheeling past the finish line in 6:26:54, or 15.5 miles per hour.
Cole Ledbetter of Bondurant, who finished 10th overall in a time of 8:03.40, said Iowa is definitely not flat. His Garmin device measured more than 8,870 feet of climb during the ride. His partner, Kelsi Jurik of Bondurant, rode the 100K ride and she said it was equally hilly. However, they were not complaining.
“I loved it. It was the best course I’ve riden this year,” Jurik said.
Mark Stender of Dubuque noted the course was “very challenging and scenic.”
“The B roads were fun and the race was well supported,” Stender said.
“It was tough. Lots of long climbs and every type of gravel there is. And all those B roads,” said Brian Johnson of Des Moines shortly after crossing the finish in 12th place.
There were 28 riders in the 100K ride, which is a little more than 62 miles. Matthew Moehn of Pleasant Hill won the 100K in a time of 3:33:56, or 16.9 miles per hour.
There were two area participants in the 100K ride. Tracy McIntosh of Glidden took second place in the Women’s 50+ division in a time of 5:57.32, while Nikki Sorsensen, 48, of Manning finished third in the women’s Fat Tire Division in a time of 6:11.46.
Race organizer Sarah Cooper of Des Moines designed the course over some of Guthrie County’s most challenging gravel and dirt roads. Cooper, who is pretty well known in the biking field for winning the Race Across America -- from Oceanside, California, to Annapolis, Md in 2018 -- received plenty of praise for how well the event was organized.
“Race directors are fantastic, and the after party was worth climbing all those hills for,” Deanne Herr posted on Social Media.
“The most fun gravel course I’ve ridden in while. Great scenery and plenty of well dispersed support spots,” said Christopher Rhodes of Ankeny, who rode in the 100 mile event.
“The weather was perfect and the riders enjoyed the local gravel and dirt roads,” acknowledged Cooper. “And Whiterock Conservancy is a fantastic venue. We are already looking forward to net year,” she added.

07/13/2019

GRAVEL ROAD BIKE RACE AND ULTRA MARATHON HELP SHOW OFF WHITEROCK CONSERVANCY

On the heels of the Iowa Gravel Classic, the inaugural Whiterock Ultra held a few hours later also captured high praise among the participants.
Fourteen out of 24 registered runners finished the 50 mile run...which, by the way, STARTED AT ONE MINUTE PAST MIDNIGHT ON SUNDAY MORNING! Who runs a 50 mile in the middle of the night?
Curt Pote is one. A Guthrie Center graduate who now lives in Ankeny and is the son of Larry Pote of rural C**n Rapids, Pote finished second overall in the 50 mile run in a time of 10:26.21.9. Pote is no couch potato, having spent much of his adult life in extreme competitions such as rugged survival competitions in the United States, Nicaragua and Australia.
However, Pote couldn’t keep pace with the winner Carter Dodd, who blew away the competition with a time of 8:23.45.1, or 09:58 per mile!
There were 48 competitors in the 50K, which is about 31 miles. Thirty-seven finished. The winning time of 4:07.05.8 was turned in by 34-year-old Cody Jones.
Perhaps the most noteworthy competitor was also the oldest competitor. Sixty-nine-year-old Rich Holmes of Druham, NC, a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel has -- believe it or not -- run over 100 ultras and 740 marathons(!) and he’s in the process of competing a race in all 50 states for the eighth time! Iowa was his 4oth state on the eighth time around.
Holmes was very complimentary to the organizers of the Whiterock Ultra, Michael McGinn of Johnston and Greg Gayman of Grimes. On a page shared by Whiterock Conservancy, Holmes wrote the following:
“What a terrific inaugural event! I have been to scores of “first time” races and there are always little bugs and snafus that were not anticipated. Your race was an exception – it was on time, well-managed, the best marked trail race I have seen for an inaugural event (and as well-marked as any race with a long history), and I have no suggestions for how to improve it. The course was also wonderful! It was challenging enough for a seasoned trail runner, but also not very technical so it would make a good race for someone just transitioning from road to trail. The single-track was runnable throughout, and included a great many miles of beautiful terrain. (My favorite was in the middle section where the trail sliced through white oaks, with sun dappling the ground through the leafy trees but the single-track being straight and smooth so that I could enjoy the vista without paying much attention to trip hazards.) This is a gem of a race; I hope you can get the Conservancy to let you add to the field size as I can see it will always fill quickly once the word is out. To my 50K friends looking for a delightful Iowa experience that is not “great plains or cities”, this is the perfect choice – register as soon as it opens!”
For their part, McGinn said he and Gayman look forward to organizing the event again in 2020.
“Greg and I had a blast doing this and we are so happy it ran so smoothly. We have a ton of people to thank for that... Volunteers, the runners, the conservancy itself. Based on the feedback were receiving, it worked out for you all as well.
Looking forward to 2020!”

09/03/2018

Enjoy this story we printed in August 30, 2018 issue of the C**n Rapids Enterprise. Go to coonrapidsenterprise.com and subscribe electronically for just $25 a year!

DONNA'S CAFE -- How a young couple built cherished memories for a generation of Dedham residents
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Even in the depth of winter when the bitter cold darkness lingered much later in the morning, Dean Ankenbauer was at the cafe by 5 a.m. ready to serve coffee and breakfast to the Dedham farmers. At the end of each day after the last customer had gone, usually by midnight, Dean’s wife, Donna, was able to close up.
How Dean and Donna Ankenbauer labored such demanding hours in their beloved Donna’s Cafe is stunning -- at least by today’s standards -- and yet they did it all while raising three daughters.
Dean and Donna owned and operated Donna’s Cafe for 27 years, retiring in 1984 after Dean became ill with cancer. The business sold in 1985, and Dean died in 1988.
Although the Dedham cafe continued operation under various owners until recently, the original Donna’s Cafe is a cherished memory for a generation of Dedham residents. In its heyday, Donna’s Cafe was a combination of good old-fashioned food, coffee and socializing...along with plenty of Dean’s prankster antics.
“Dean was a hard worker, manager, money maker and a clown -- he loved making people laugh. He enjoyed people...actually we both did,” Donna Ankenbauer told members of the C**n Rapids Rotary Club on a recent Thursday in late July.
Donna left no doubt about the hard work running a small town cafe but she didn’t speak with regret. In fact, she spoke with pride.
“Dean would go to work at five in the morning and I would get the girls up and ready for school, or the babysitter if it was that time of the year -- and then come to work at nine,” Donna recalled. “Dean would go home and then come back and we’d work the noon hour together. Then he’d go home again until five and he and a waitress would do the supper hour. I would come back to work after supper and he’d go home to be with our girls and I would close up at midnight...or even later on Saturday nights after the taverns closed.”
Donna said the family had one vacation in the 27 years they were in business when they won a week’s trip to Lake Okoboji.
“We were there two days and then there was a train wreck by Dedham and the girls who were filling in for us were staying open 24 hours a day to feed the clean-up crews. Dean and I came home and my parents came to stay with the girls in Okoboji.”
“Another time we stayed open 24 hours a day when they built the new grain storage units at the cooperative,” Donna related.
Dean and Donna were born and raised in Dedham. When Dean, 20, and Donna, 18, married in 1952, Dedham was a thriving little burb, with a Catholic Church and a Methodist Church, a Catholic School and a public school, two gas stations, blacksmith shop, two livestock dealers, two grocery stores, hardware store, three taverns, two garages and one little cafe.
The cafe was called “Johnny’s Place” after its owner, Johnny Balukoff. Others just called it the Northside Tavern. As a young newlywed, Dean was working at Johnny’s Place when the state was constructing the new highway (Hwy 141) south of Dedham.
“Workmen would come to Johnny’s Place for lunch so Dean was really busy,” Donna recalled. “I would come help out at noon. We would have the place full and the crews from the highway would stand at the counter to eat. When Johnny sold the place, Dean went across the street to work for Art Hoehne at the Southside Lounge. They had a chicken special one night a week so I’d come help with that.”
The young newlyweds had moved into the back apartment of a wooden building in Dedham’s commercial district. The building was owned by Donna’s father, Leo Stangl, and although it was nothing special, it was an historic structure of sorts, built in 1890 by Fred Toovey, the town pharmacist. Later Dr. Chain had an office there and then Ben Roderick had a barbershop there. Shortly after Dean and Donna moved in, the only other tenant moved out.
“By now, we had three little girls,” Donna recalled. “I said to Dean one day, ‘You know, we have this big building and it’s empty. And we’re working in the cafe for these people who are making money. Why can’t we do it?’
Dean replied, “First of all, you have to have money and no bank is going to loan us any money.’”
“So I got to thinking,” Donna continued. “Dean always bragged about his Grandma Mabel having so much money. So I thought, well, I’d try it. So I went to Mabel and said, ‘Dean and I would like to start a cafe but we don’t have any money. Could we borrow some money from you?’ She just looked at me and said, ‘Absolutely not. You belong at home with your girls.’ I thanked her but I was steaming a little bit.”
Donna was sewing for extra money at the time and one of her clients was Lucille Stangl. Donna let it slip about what happened with Dean’s Grandma Mabel and they laughed about it. The following week while Donna was out in the back alley hanging laundry, Lucille’s husband, Clayton, (everybody called him ‘Fat’) pulled up in his car.
“He said, ‘Hey Donna, you want to start a cafe?’ I said, Yea, but we don’t have any money and no bank is going to give us anything. He said, ‘Come on over to the bank and we’ll get the money’. So Fat borrowed us $2500.”
As luck would have it, a cafe in Templeton had just closed so Dean and Donna were able to buy all the equipment and booths. They worked hard to install the equipment in the front where Donna and Dean lived but when they got all ready to open, they didn’t have any money left to stock it.
“Harold Rice was the banker then and he gave us $500 out of his own pocket to get us started,” Donna said.
And by the end of the year, the new entrepreuners had both Harold Rice and Fat Stangl paid off!
In 1958 when Donna’s Cafe opened, hamburgers were 20 cents, french fries were 15 cents and soda pop was a dime. Meals were a dollar.
Donna said that business was good and they worked hard. Back then, farmers had crews to help one another during harvest season and they would bring them into Donna’s for lunch. Dean would space them out every 20 minutes.
“Carl Schultes crew north of town would be first, then Lloyds and Richardsons by Carrollton and from C**n Rapids, Marvin Penfold, then Yeagers, and from south of Dedham the Owens, and Dale Edwards. We would feed 150 people at noon and loved it,” she said.
Through the years, Dean’s antics at the cafe became legendary. Much of his foolishness centered around an old starter pistol that Dean kept behind the counter. Once when Dedham Mayor Merlin Nair complained that it was cold in the cafe, Dean told Nair to light the oil burner.
It was an old Siegler oil burner that you primed with kerosene,” Donna explained. “When Nair threw the match, Dean was waiting and fired the pistol,” she laughed. “He never complained again.”
Another time a new potato chip delivery man had just refilled the chip display holder and was lifting it back onto the counter when Dean hollered at him and shot the pistol. “Bags of potato chips were all over but eventually he came to enjoy the cafe,” Donna said.
Perhaps the best pistol story was the day when Dean and Donna were busy feeding a large group of C**n Rapids businessmen and bankers in the back dining area.
“I had just finished delivering all their food when Dean went tearing through the room shooting the pistol and hollering, ‘There I finally got that damn rat!’ There was dead silence, then laughter,” Donna laughed.
Iowa Highway Patrol officers were regular customers, dining at the cafe once or twice a week. While Dean wisely holstered the starter pistol, Donna said, he hardly eased off. When his daughters were old enough to help out at the cafe at suppertime, Dean would warn the patrolmen to stay away from his daughters.
“If you ticket my wife or daughters, I’ll p*e in your soup,” Dean loved to tell the officers.
Donna said the cafe was closed on Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter. Except that it wasn’t. They entertained both sides of their families including aunts and uncles along with several of the town bachelors. One of the bachelors was a little challenged but he’d help with the garbage and his brother paid for his dinners. He was such a regular at holiday dinners that the Ankenbauer’s youngest daughter once thought he was her brother.
“Why did you think that?” Donna wondered.
“Well, he was always at the cafe and got Easter Eggs and Christmas presents,” was the answer.
Dean and Donna raised three daughters who all worked in the cafe. Funny then, how all three ended up in careers as registered nurses!
Donna’s Cafe was the place to go if you were a kid. Both Dean and Donna let the Dedham kids do anything, said Dan Pomeroy, a Dedham native born in 1957 who hung out at the cafe countless times in the 1960s and 1970s.
“As kids in Dedham, they really would let us do anything,” Pomeroy said. “We used to come into the cafe after playing ball at the diamond. If there were out-of-town people in there I imagine they just shook their heads, because we would walk right behind the counter and get our own pop and put our dime down on the counter. Or in the winter if we were out sledding, we’d come waltzing in and throw all our wet gloves on that oil burner to dry them off.”
Donna said she remembered Sunday afternoons when many of the Dedham kids came in and played cards “and thought of ways to torment the town cop, Bill Soppe,” she laughed, saying she never once ratted them out. “They were good kids, just a little ornery.”
Dean and Donna were veterans in the cafe business by the time the Dedham Centennial approached. It was a splendid time for everyone living in Dedham or anyone with some connection to the town. Both Dean and Donna were involved in many activities during the year leading up to the summer of 1983 when the main centennial events were held. Donna was instrumental in getting the Dedham Centennial Book printed and she made sure every family submitted a family history for the book.
But as successful and memorable as the Dedham centennial was, it also marked the beginning of the end for Donna’s Cafe. Less than a year later, Dean was diagnosed with lung cancer.
“I kept the cafe open for about eight months but then decided he needed me worse than I needed the cafe.”
Perhaps the most amazing thing in the story about Donna’s Cafe is what happened to Donna after Dean died in 1988 following his four-year-battle with lung cancer. She was 54 years old.
“When Dean passed away, I thought, what do I do now?,” Donna reflected.
She thought about her three daughters who were all registered nurses. And she thought about the nurses who helped to administer care to Dean when he was ill.
“Everything they did to Dean I thought I could do so I went up to DMACC in Carroll and applied.”
Donna earned her LPN degree, even taking chemistry because she didn’t take it in high school. In 1989 DMACC in Carroll didn’t offer an RN degree so she had to enroll at Boone. She lived in Ames because much of the training was done at Mary Greeley Hospital there.
“Funny part about that was there was a young girl who couldn’t find a place to live so I offered to let her stay with me. It turned out to be Mike and Kay Anthofer’s daughter, Michelle (CRB 1987 grad). We lived together that year and got along good and we graduated together,” Donna said.
Dr. Gary Castle called Donna before she had even graduated to ask if she was interested in working for him at the Village Clinic in C**n Rapids after she earned her degree.
“So I went to work there. Then he said, ‘You have to get your x-ray license so I went to Ankeny at night and got my x-ray license.”
Donna worked at the Village Clinic for 16 years.
“I worked until I was 70 and then I thought I better give it up, so I said, that’s enough, I quit. Then I went up to the McFarland Clinic in Carroll for some reason and a nurse said to me, “Why don’t you work here. I said, I’m 70 years old, and she said, “I don’t care, why don’t you work here? So I applied and I got the job and worked there six years. Then I thought, what if I really screw up? So I quit at 76.”
Now at 84, Donna has no interest in nursing. That can’t be said about the cafe because a few years ago after one of the subsequent owners couldn’t make it go and closed it -- she bought it back! Unfortunately, she hasn’t had much success in finding someone who can successfully manage the business.
“I’d really like to sell it or rent it,” she admitted.
But she doesn’t lose any sleep over it.
“As I always tell my girls, if I die tomorrow, I’ve lived a full life,” she said.